


Resolve

by WahlBuilder



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Relationship, because of course, really it is pre-Geoffrey/Jonathan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21513226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Geoffrey takes an opportunity to go through the personal effects of his leech. He finds things that surprise him.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 57





	Resolve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Modlisznik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Modlisznik/gifts).



> For Mo. Long-awaited.

Geoffrey peered around the lair carefully, keeping close to the balcony doors. Which was probably not a good idea, because if he threw himself out, the fall would be quite painful, but better that than a leech stuck to his neck. He pulled his neckerchief higher over his throat.

It couldn’t be called a lair, exactly, if he was being honest. He’d seen enough lairs, with their depravity of various kinds, according to the inclinations of a particular leech. And this was... A laboratory, judging by the whole set-up and the—he took a whiff of air—scent of antiseptic and cleaned tools and gauze. And also, tiny private doctor quarters.

Geoffrey padded, knees bent, to the screen and peered around it. Then noted to himself to reward his people: as they had reported, the leech had been lured out far away enough that he wouldn’t have been able to return before sunrise and had to spend daylight hours somewhere away from the hospital. Geoffrey frowned at himself, however, noting a pang of... disappointment. Not that he was planning to stab the leech in his sleep, but he could have gleaned a few things while the leech slept. Would he be relaxed, peaceful, looking younger? Or would he frown, not needing to control himself anymore in front of others?

 _It_ , Geoffrey reminded himself. A leech. Not an animal, even, but a horrible, egoistic parasite wearing a handsome face.

Geoffrey circled around, touching this and that. The night would cool his touch, and he had made sure to not wear any scent, to not even travel through any place that would leave a strong, alien scent. He didn’t want the leech to know he’d been here.

There was a lot to learn about the fancy doctor from other sources, however. He’d been a public figure, a well-known figure. A well- _off_ figure, also, and what such a fancy doctor would be doing here, in this place of misery? Well, Geoffrey had a couple of ideas: all the waifs and strays here wouldn’t be missed, right? And yet... While his mind told him the leech would stay here exactly for that, his gut, or whatever else, told him it wasn’t so. Doctor Reid wasn’t here for those people to snack on them with impunity. He was here just... for them. Because if not him, who else would do this wretched job?

Geoffrey rolled his shoulders, discomfited by such an... intimate point of similarity between the leech and himself. No, it was just Geoffrey’s stupid human brain trying to find human motive in the leech. Like people getting attached to their house, their pets, their things, their plants, giving them names...

He spotted a plant by a desk. Probably here for specimens or experiments or something.

There were actually several tables and desks. Geoffrey ventured closer to one tucked away from others. There was a thick book, bound in simple brown cardstock. He opened it without a pang of shame. There were rows and columns on the first few pages, filled with names and a number and a date. He noticed numbers on the lower right corner of the right page. Then picked a name at random and, assuming that numbers signified pages, flipped further. He didn’t exactly expect it to be a register of victims or something—though he had met leeches who kept such a thing out of vanity characteristic of most leeches—and he wasn’t surprised that it turned out to be a patient register. Filled with minuscule, fleeting handwriting, fanciful like everything about Doctor Leech, a lot of abbreviations and symbols that probably meant something medicinal. Geoffrey flipped back to the beginning, ran a finger over the columns. There were a lot of names.

As far as Geoffrey’s research was correct, his leech was a researcher and, by cosmic irony, a haematologist. A brilliant one, at that. Geoffrey had read some of the leech’s papers, those he had managed to get in these times of hell, and though he hadn’t understood everything, he had certainly understood that Jonathan Reid was Someone in the world of fancy doctors. It _had_ been a surprise to find quite a lot of papers written for laymen, and not only about blood transfusion and such. Just like he talked, the leech had a way with written word also. Geoffrey could admit that, before becoming a leech, Jonathan Reid had a... fascinating mind—and, it seemed, unlike most of the fancy doctors, he actually gave a damn about people and not only treated them as curious specimens.

Used to. Now, he was just a parasite.

But here, in this bloody miserable place, the brilliant Jonathan Reid had seemed to cast away his coronet and did... pretty much everything, from surgeries to watching over those whose ailings were of the mind. It wouldn’t matter, in the whole hell that this city had always been, but, Geoffrey thought, it mattered to all those people.

He had sneaked around the hospital, watched the leech move from patient to staff to the loved ones of the patients, always finding a kind word for everyone, even those who snarled at him. It was... strange. Geoffrey had wondered, then, whether the leech would find a kind word for him also.

He shook his head and closed the register and looked around the desk. There were a few photographic cards on the desk, fitted carefully in frames. There was a slightly stiff family portrait: a mother, a father and two children. It was a little funny to recognise the tall, handsome doctor with crooked broken nose and heavy beard—in a gawky boy. Only the eyes remained the same, intense but ever so kind.

Another card was a portrait of a young lady—a profile of her head, her hair pinned up in a slightly outdated style, opening a long, graceful neck. Geoffrey knew immediately that it wasn’t some past love. The severe profile and high cheekbones and the shape of the mouth put her as a family—the older version of the girl on the family photo. It was strange to think that the leech had family. Maybe still had, maybe they had perished or... No. No matter how he tried, Geoffrey couldn’t imagine Doctor Reid coming to them as a monster and killing them all, like...

He bit the inside of his cheek and pushed his own memories away. Anger was very useful in his duty—but he’d had to learn to control his temper, his emotions, learn how to recognise when the waking nightmares threatened to consume him.

He looked at the portrait of the lady again and promised to her that once he put the monster her brother had become to the final rest, he would find her and tell her a little tale. That her brother had returned from the war and worked himself to the bone in a hospital, treating the most destitute until he perished like many others from the disease he had been fighting. That he had been a hero and though now he was dead, she could be proud of him.

The third photocard he almost overlooked—but then it made him pause. He’d a couple of such pictures: a company before being shipped overseas, most of them now dead, or a group of brothers-in-arms right on the front lines—moments before they perished. But what caught his attention was a most unusual member of the group—a skeleton with a military cap, its hand lying casually on the knee of... Jonathan Reid, he realised. A bearded Reid with sunken cheeks—but devils dancing in his eyes. The other men on the photograph had equally worn, sunken faces, but one or two showed pleasure at their little joke. It was so unlike the stiff family portrait or even the painful photocard of the sister. There was something very alive about this joke staged by people most of whom might have been now dead or certainly destroyed by the war in other ways.

Humour was a thing monsters didn’t possess.

Geoffrey picked the frame. Looking closer, he noticed that this picture was creased, it had been folded by half, maybe carried in a breast pocket—to remind of more human things in the middle of hell, perhaps? A lifeline, a bit of hope.

Geoffrey pulled the backing of the frame and took the picture carefully in his hands. It was so brittle, so worn—not only from keeping, but from handling it too often. By contrast, the family picture and the profile looked sturdier, although they must have been much older. They were personal—but they weren’t a talisman like this one.

He looked into the mischievous eyes of Doctor Reid on the picture. The scar on that handsome beak darker, probably a fresh wound at the time the picture had been taken. Geoffrey turned it. There was an inscription upon the lower edge, dangerously close to frying, in faded ink, in that hasty handwriting, the pen barely keeping with the thought: Surgeon staff, No 2 Stationary, incl. Dr. Bones.

Geoffrey snorted. ‘Dr. Bones’ must have been the skeleton. Judging by the cap, it even was an officer, with a rank.

It was a shame that such a man had been destroyed and only a monster wearing his liking left. Geoffrey would like to meet Jonathan Reid. He would have thought that such a fancy doctor would hardly look at him—but now that he knew a lot more, both from his sources and his observations, he thought that Dr. Reid would. Maybe they even could have...

No. Idle thoughts. Even if they could understand each other, their meeting would have been brief. A brilliant career for Dr. Reid—and hunting leeches and other abominations, for Geoffrey McCullum. What an irony that he’d met only the parasite, that it was in this form, these circumstances they could even meet at all without hiding what they were.

But he had to stop thinking about that. There was no Jonathan Reid anymore.

Geoffrey looked at this past doctor again, his devious, tired eyes. He didn’t look much different now. Always tired.

Geoffrey folded the photocard carefully and put it into his breast pocket. It would remind him of his resolve, his duty: to stop this monster, for the sake of his sister, for the sake of that mischievous doctor. And, if things became very ugly indeed, he could use it as a leverage on the leech. Reid was a young vampire. They were prone to strong emotions. And looking into that parasite’s eyes, Geoffrey would think of the good doctor.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this photo](https://deathandmysticism.tumblr.com/post/173294463735).


End file.
